


I'm OK, You're OK

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-05
Updated: 2011-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-25 17:38:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sam might be mad at Dean, but that doesn't mean he's going to stand around and let him get eaten by a Leviathan." (prompt by Laurificus)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm OK, You're OK

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through 7.6. Written for a post 7.6 reunion commentfic meme. Borrows a line of dialogue allegedly present in the last scene of 7.6 before Jensen and Jared tinkered with it.

“Suicide by angel was bad enough,” says Sam, “Trying to get yourself eaten is just gross.”

Which isn’t fair. So Dean had found a credit card in Robert Plant’s name in the glove compartment when he’d picked up the car. So he might have forgotten to pass it on to Frank. So he maybe checked into a motel with it and stocked up on booze and ordered a pizza. Doesn’t mean he’s itching to get eaten. Ordering pizza’s not some kind of crime. He’d just wanted to be drunk and fucked up with the comfort of a familiar alias. And a familiar car. And a familiar conviction that Sam’s gone, that at least it’s over. Something to count on.

Which would be fine if Sam were gone. Instead he’s dragging Dean through the snowy woods at an efficient jog and yelling at him, the better to show off how not out of breath he is.

“I had a plan,” says Dean, because he would have thought of one long before the Leviathan pizza boy had finished his cheese act if Sam hadn’t distracted him by kicking in the door. It’s hard to strategize and simultaneously take in how stupid Sam looks brandishing a green plastic water gun full of Borax in one hand and a machete in the other. It’s not like Dean didn’t have Borax of his very own. But for a moment there, when the pizza boy did that stupid alien toothy tonguey thing, Dean had smelled gas and heard Jo’s voice, trying to be so fucking kind. Sam never can leave well enough alone.

Sam snorts. “Hoping they’d die of your liver damage after eating you? Martyr Dean saves the day one last time?” he asks.

Dean trips on a root and goes down in cold soft snow. Sam hauls him up.

The cabin must be a good five miles from where Sam had parked the Impala in a rutted clearing screened by trees. Dean’s jacket is too thin for the goddamn mountains, and it’s soaked with Borax and black Leviathan goop and melting snow. His blood is pounding sluggishly in his temples as he stumbles along and the endless prickly black and white landscape swirls around him. After he goes down a second time Sam keeps a grip on his arm and Dean doesn’t protest.

 

Sam must have been holed up in the cabin the whole time Dean’s been in this town. There’s a nest of ratty blankets on the floor in front of the fireplace, papers and laptop spread around it in a neat half circle. No furniture, but there are logs and kindling by the hearth. Also two plastic buckets, incongruously shiny and new. The air is cold and stale, dim grey light through the dirty windows.

“Bathroom,” says Dean, because he’s going to puke.

Sam hands him a bucket. Icy water sloshes out of it onto Dean’s shins when his hands shake on the handle.

“No running water,” says Sam. “Flush with the bucket.” His face is red with cold and exertion and set with anger. He kneels on the hearth and starts breaking kindling across his thighs with sharp snaps. Dean leaves a trail of splashes across the floor to the bathroom.

The doors in this place are thin and don’t close properly. Dean can hear the small whoosh and whisper of catching flames in the intervals of heaving, and he’s sure Sam can hear every glorious retch. Whisky and Ding Dongs are not a good combination on the way back up. And once Dean is done and resting his forehead on the chipped rim of the toilet, waiting to summon the energy to reach for the damn bucket, he can hear every one of Sam’s footsteps crossing the room, the creak of the bathroom door opening without so much as a by-your-leave. The sounds go through his head like they’re coming from some giant amped up boombox.

Sam is carrying alcohol wipes, a bottle of water, a tiny, travel-size thing of Listerene, and aspirin. It’s lucky he has those freakishly huge hands. He sets his Dean-tackling supplies down and stares expressionlessly till Dean butt shuffles awkwardly back from the toilet and leans against the wall. Sam does the bucket flush thing with vicious and effective force, then crouches down. Dean closes his eyes against Sam’s glare, feels the startling cold of the alcohol wipe on his hands and then his face, quick hard swipes, angry and contained and gentle all at once. Like a mother mopping up a toddler after a spectacular tantrum. He lets Sam help him up, sloshes Listerene obediently around his mouth, spits, and is rewarded with water and pills and more water.

Dean’s shivering still, not surface cold, deep shudders. Sam has to undo his buttons and belt buckle for him, tug at his sodden clothes. Sam has already changed – into his jogging outfit, for Christ’s sake, but Dean supposes it’s dry and warm. Sam isn’t just trying to annoy him. Probably. He’s dug Dean’s sweats out of his bag. Dean puts them on and huddles in a blanket in front of the fire, listening to the cheerful snap crackle and pop of the flames and Sam’s silence. It’s getting dark and there’s no electricity, either, only the uncertain shifting light of flames and a candle Sam’s got stuck to a broken saucer.

“Why’re you staying in this dump, anyway?” Dean asks.

“No credit cards, remember? Because the Leviathans can trace them and some of us don’t have a deathwish.”

“I don’t have a deathwish. It’s your genius plan involves hypothermia and starvation.”

Sam digs one of his chewy cardboard protein bars out from somewhere in the nest of blankets and tosses it in front of Dean. Dean doesn’t pick it up. He’d just puke again. Sam takes it back, tears the wrapper open, and slaps it into Dean’s hand.

“Eat the damn thing,” he says.

Dean takes a tiny, chewy cardboard bite and chokes, gagging. Sam snatches the bar away from him and slams it down on the floor.

“Fine,” he says, “Starve.”

“Go fuck yourself, Sam,” says Dean. “What are you even doing here? You wanted gone. You got what you want, like always. And fine, you’d a right to be pissed. So I gave you your fucking space. But I guess it got boring, all that righteous rage and no object.”

“Believe me, a rustic getaway with my brother is the very last thing that I want. I don’t even want to look at you right now. But what am I supposed to do, Dean? I take my eyes off you, you go and get killed.”

“And you walk away, you could fall down Lucifer’s rabbit hole and start waving a gun around again. Don’t act like I’m the one shouldn’t be out on his own. Don’t act like I’m the loose cannon here.”

Sam pounds his fist on the floor. Dean grabs at the candle before it falls over.

“Christ, Dean. Are you even listening to yourself? How much of a fucking hypocrite are you? You. You were just sitting there. If I hadn’t busted in, if I hadn’t been stalking that thing, you’d have gone on sitting there while it tore out your liver. You’re goddamn right I’ve got a right to be pissed. I’m pissed about you lying to me and I’m pissed about you killing my goddamn friend and I’m pissed about you Just. Fucking. _Sitting_ there with a bottle of booze and a Leviathan, waiting to die.”

And then Sam is surging over him, pushing him back. The floor is hard and unforgiving under the thin layer of blanket, and Sam is heavy. He mouths at Dean’s jaw, a press of bared teeth more than a kiss.

“Jesus fuck, Dean,” he says. He ruts down, urgent and uneven, with little sobbing grunts. Dean braces himself, spreads his legs so Sam can settle a bit more solidly against him, gets a hand on Sam’s ass to pull him closer. Sam’s breath shudders in and out, fast and panting, and his face is twisted and sweaty and distant, eyes screwed shut.

“Sammy,” says Dean, but Sam goes on thrusting against Dean like it’s hurting him, like it’s hurting Dean. Dean gropes down Sam’s left arm, pries his fingers away where they’re fisted over his palm, brushes his thumb against the ragged scar there. “Sammy,” he says again. Sam’s eyes snap open and fasten on Dean’s. His hips stutter and go still and a sticky damp patch seeps into Dean’s sweats. Sam lets out a long, shuddering sigh. He slumps for a moment and then rolls off, but he doesn’t pull away. His leans his head against Dean’s shoulder and his eyes close again, but now he just looks tired. He swallows, opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, closes it again.

“Maybe I’m pissed, too,” says Dean. “That ever occur to you?”

And he probably _is_ pissed. Sam taking off is exhausting, over and over. Sam hallucinating the fucking devil, looking at Dean and seeing Lucifer, looking at Lucifer and seeing Dean, that’s something Dean can’t think about. And there’s an endless column of black marks against Sam anyway, fading back down the years. He borrowed Dean’s best knife when he was twelve and used it to try to learn to whittle. Dad had been furious at the nicked blade, Dean not taking care of his tools. Dean still has the misshapen lump of a tailless dog Sam had carved him, tossed in a shoebox in the trunk with some tapes that have broken that he hasn’t thrown out yet.

Sam smiles reluctantly against his shoulder.

“Wouldn’t be surprised,” he says, “For a mostly forgiving person you hold a lot of grudges.”

Dean risks tracing his fingers along Sam’s jaw, pushing the hair out of his face. Sam jerks and then settles. His hand moves up across Dean’s chest and fastens on his shoulder, a little too tight.

“You OK?” he says.

“I’m fine,” Dean lies.

Sam snorts quietly. “Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”


End file.
